Fifty Moments That Never Happened
by intastella burst
Summary: Fifty sentences to fifty themes, some AU, some canon-based. Jack/Kate. Spoilers through 5x15; written before the finale.


_  
#01 - Ring_

She considers wearing it on a chain about her neck, like Rose, but Jack isn't missing; she thinks of sleeping with it beneath her pillow, like Sun, but he isn't dead; she ponders throwing it down the garbage disposal and listening to the satisfying crush, like a vindictive ex, but he isn't malicious: she finally decides on hiding it in a drawer and throwing away the key, because if he is anything, he is gone.

_#02 - Hero_

"I'm not a hero," he tells her, the press, his mother, his colleagues, anyone who'll listen, over and over again, short and defiant, as if heroism is something akin to sin, and she doesn't want to believe him, but why would he lie?

_#03 - Memory_

_I hate you, _she tells the empty room, slow, steady, and then louder, until her voice doesn't crack, and she _isn't_ thinking of all the times she rehearsed _I love you_ with the same fervor.

_#04 - Box_

Two weeks later she finally gets rid of them, the months-old newspapers he "never got around to recycling" (she knows better, knows that they're full of lies about them, about the Six, and there's nothing a masochist enjoys more than sweet sweet lies), but she keeps the cardboard box he kept them in, stacked high on a shelf in the garage, waiting for his subscription to be renewed.

_#05 - Run_

When he calls her name it sounds soft and hopeless and half-finished and true, and she stumbles in her haste, leaving the clearing far behind, cheeks fiery and flushed, shameful, heart thudding in her ears, running, running, run-ning, two perfect round syllables pushing her faster and faster to oblivion (_the person he's calling for doesn't exist_).

_#06 - Hurricane_

August is hurricane season in the South Pacific: Kate's glued to the TV in their living room, arms tight around her knees, and the tears sear blind trails down her face, late into the night, until Jack comes up behind her, voice shy against the static-y cable (come to bed, please), and she is too numb to feel the way his fingers tremble around hers.

_#07 - Wings_

Jack swoops Aaron through the air, arms secure at his chest, growling engine noises in his ear and laughing as the two-year-old giggles, and Kate's proud smile is just this side of shattering, because this is as close to having wings as they both will ever be.

_#08 - Cold_

This is not gonna change, and goosebumps pop up on her skin, indicative of the ice in her voice, and she cocks her gun and locks into step at his side, not looking at him, because if she does the gratitude in his eyes will make her cry.

_#09 - Red_

The wine, rich and dark and expensive, leaves a stain on her fancy new shirt but she doesn't mind, because after two sips he leaves his untouched, and the blood pumping through her veins as he moves in her is stronger than any alcohol.

_#10 - Drink_

She can taste the whiskey on his breath through the phone line, every message growing more desperate, more drunken, and as her finger hovers over the _delete_ button she gulps her ice water down with the thirst of a dead woman.

_#11 - Midnight_

The clock strikes eleven and Jack is pacing, tie half-undone, eyes darting over the sterile apartment for something familiar, anything to help him remember the time before everything went to hell; the clock strikes twelve and Jack is shaking, pill half-choked down, eyes shut, groping in the dark for anything to help him forget.

_#12 - Temptation_

Temptation, we will all suffer from it, his dad told him once in a sudden burst of profundity (and profanity, but that's a given): Kate smiles at him and Jack knows that this he will suffer gladly.

_#13 - View_

It's cheesy and it's trite, but the look on her face when she says "yes" is worth a hundred of her "maybe"s.

_#14 - Music_

Jack veers between stations on the drive home, classic rock and bubble-gum pop and Mozart and nothing's on, _nothing's _doing it for him until her name scratches across the airwaves; it's NPR, reliable as always, and the trial coverage begins, like it was just waiting for him to turn the dial.

_#15 - Silk _

Her skin is so soft, like silk, and it's stupid, but when he's up at night, bloodshot eyes boring holes into the ceiling, which is every night lately, that's what he misses the most, the feel of the softness of her cheek, her forearm, her lips, her forgiveness, which is dubious but better than no forgiveness at all.

_#16 - Cover_

Don't ask questions burns hot into his chest and he can feel it beginning again: he kisses her back and closes his eyes to her deception, telling himself that this time around it won't matter, and when she is sleeping, shallow breathing making the coverlet rise and fall like the ocean, he almost believes that this is true.

_#17 - Promise_

His head and his hands ache with the need to see her, to touch her; her voice crackles and breaks and begs and he makes her promise: the walkie clicks off and he's left with the steady beep of Ben's heart rate monitor and the taste of a lie badly told, a freedom half-won sour and sacrificial in his mouth.

_#18 - Dream_

"I'm not here" comes, quiet and sultry, the slap of waves against the shore becoming her hand on his cheek, and for once he knows, he _knows_ beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is telling the truth.

_#19 - Candle_

_Close your eyes and make a wish_, she laughs, and he means it when he tells her that he can't think of anything more to wish for, but he blows the candle out anyway.

_#20 - Talent_

Once, several lifetimes ago, Sarah asked him, only half-joking, if there was anything he _wasn't_ good at, anything he couldn't do: this fantastic circumstantial irony hits him square between the eyes, making him shiver and sweat, every-single-time--dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot _save our ship_--Kate looks away.

_#21 - Silence_

There is so much silence between them now, so many ugly things and so many beautiful left unsaid; _I love you I love you I _think_ I love you _the worst, the most dangerous of all, and she does, she does, she thinks she does, but she won't say it, too afraid of whatever comes next.

_#22 - Journey_

She vomits into the sink when Juliet, unreadable, tells her that her test was positive, that she will have a baby and that maybe, just maybe, she will die; Jack holds her hair back from her neck and doesn't ask questions (if this is karma then she commends God for his foresight, that after all she has lost, all she has tried to be, that her journey will end like this: a life for a life,_ and that's Biblical justice_).

_#23 - Fire  
_  
Remembering the controlled sizzle of the lighter in her hand makes her chest hurt with wanting; his eyes, starry, are softer than ever in the firelight and she thinks that this crash-and-burn will be a good one.

_#24 - Strength  
_  
It's the middle of the night, going on morning now, actually, and he's sleeping, finally, one arm loosely flung around her waist, and the deja vuis killing her: it's all she can do not to slip away, leave him there alone, like the others, but then he makes a soft little-boy-lost sound, breath fluttering against her neck, and suddenly staying isn't quite so difficult after all.

_#25 - Mask_

Why me is a question she'll never ask, for fear of him peering behind her mask, and oh, look, what a pretty rhyme; Mother would be so proud.

_#26 - Ice_

Ice cubes clink, disgustingly cheery, against the sides of her glass and she wonders, not for the first time, whether it's half-empty or half-full; _there's a glass?_, he reminds her, and when he's smiling it's so hard to be cynical.

_#27 - Fall_

The smell of hotcakes on Saturday morning, the taste of coffee smooth on her tongue, the feel of the breakfast table cool beneath her hands; all of it pulls her back, jerking, bittersweet, and she falls down, down, down the rabbit hole, mouth half-open in protest, down, down, down--finally she closes her eyes, tired of screaming, and the harsh smack of concrete, the fragile crack of bones breaking, she almost doesn't notice it, so caught up is she in her dream.

_#28 - Forgotten_

Remember me she screams, half-hysterical, into the death-black void, the dust of defeat already creeping into her chest, her lungs, with every second she waits: her own voice, _me me me me, _ghostly echo, is all she gets by way of reply.

_#29 - Dance_

His fingers lace through hers and the way they fit is uncanny, and canned music blares over the speakers as she pulls him into a waltz, onetwothree(fourfive); he wants to stick to a two-step, but she's going for a tango, and they nearly knock over a towered display of apples but he catches her, laughing, really laughing, like she hasn't heard in months, before she pirouettes out of control.

_#30 - Body_

His hands are so gentle, running up and down the lines of her body: she's not sure she expected that, the softness, the tentative searching; his hands twist in her hair, warm, and she sighs into his neck, wondering what took them so long.

_#31 - Sacred_

The smell of incense, the shine of stained glass, the glistening hardwood pews, all of it makes him feel sick, wrong, intrusive; for the first time he thinks maybe this has less to do with where he is than with where he is not.

_#32 - Farewells_

"Goodbye, Jack," she says, turning away, and this time it feels like she means it.

_#33 - World_

Are you with me on this, he wants, no, _needs_ to know, the fuse tick-tick-ticking beneath his fingers, and the world waits on tenterhooks for her reply.

_#34 - Formal_

He regrets it the moment it's left his mouth, stiff and unwieldy, and he isn't surprised when she turns him down; he remembers a time when going out for coffee was the punchline to an inside joke rather than a punch to the gut, and what he still doesn't understand is how they got to be like this.

_#35 - Fever  
_  
He's burning up, eyes darting here and there, out of focus, out of time, slipping shut in a drug-induced haze; she presses her fist to her mouth, stifling back a sob before it can leave her throat, and as that first incision slices into his stomach, she feels her own turn.

_#36 - Laugh_

When she tells him he looks terrible he actually chuckles, or comes as close to a chuckle as his demons will let him, trying so hard to pretend that this is just another bad joke; her eyes don't meet his and with a flat anticlimactic thud in his chest he knows he's finally reached rock bottom.

_#37 - Lies_

Do you _love_ Miss Austen, the attorney and the world and their mother all want to know, and the jury holds their collective breath, and love has never sounded more like a dirty word, and of all the lies he's told lately, all the lives he's ruined, this short perfunctory _no_ is the hardest to choke out.

_#38 - Forever_

Over the years, Jack's gained a fair amount of skepticism about _'til death do you part_ and the rest of that idealistic shit: after Sarah, words mean less, and he thinks that maybe 'til you _part _is the best he can hope for; Kate smells sweet, like wine and strawberries and the wind and he thinks that if even if this doesn't last 'til death, it'll end up killing him anyway.

_#39 - Overwhelmed_

On the good days he thinks he can do it; maybe he'll be able to hold onto this, her, for just a little bit longer; on the bad days it's all he can do not to give up, and her smile and the smell of her hair are asphyxiating, too beautiful, and he counts himself lucky that she's still there, her arms (strong, not strangling) around his neck, for now at least.

_#40 - Whisper_

"Good God, son," Ray whispered, conspiratorial, "this one's a _keeper_," and thinking back on this really shouldn't make his bottled water taste like sulfur.

_#41 - Wait_

It isn't supposed to be this way: she isn't supposed to need him like this, like air, and maybe she doesn't, maybe she's under some sort of spell, maybe he is less than she originally thought he had the potential to be; he tells her he loves her, matter-of-fact, and by that he means he'll wait as long as it takes; and even if he isn't who she thought he was, somehow she is past caring, and that is the most frightening thing of all.

_#42 - Talk_

_You okay?_ has almost become their placeholder, a how's-the-weather sort of inquiry, rote; he asks her every-single-time and truth be told, nine times out of ten she _hasn't_ been okay, but at least he's asking, and so her perpetual _yeah_ is one of the truest lies she's ever told.

_#43 - Search_

What's weird is that until she found him, she hadn't even known she'd been looking.

_#44 - Hope_

His hands caress the keys, his song sad enough to be a lullaby, and his face is open and free in the moment before he hits that final chord; something surges in her chest and_ this_ is why she insisted on coming back for him in the first place.

_#45 - Eclipse_

If his plan, his insane plan, works, it'll all be gone, gone for good, wiped out, never happened, _they'll_ never have happened, never even met: the sugary taste of righteousness fills her mouth and she thinks that she wouldn't be so hurt had he given her any indication, any at all, that it's hard for him, too.

_#46 - Gravity_

When she finally gets it out, those three toxic words, he looks at her like she's his center, like he's the moon and she's the Earth, or the Sun, whichever, who even cares; she feels the weight of it, each portentous syllable sinking deep into her bones, and when he says he loves her, too--_well_, she thinks she finally understands what her mother meant.

_#47 - Highway_

She hates that silly old dump of his, hates it with an improbable passion, and even though she doesn't know shit about cars, she really can't see any appeal whatsoever, until he takes her for a spin to see his grandfather one day, windows rolled all the way down, sunshine glancing happy off the windshield, Patsy Cline on the radio (some things simply aren't negotiable), and while he hasn't quite convinced her yet, she has to acknowledge that perhaps there's something to be said for the classics.

_#48 - Unknown_

"Where's Jack?" the other woman asks, but what she really means is _why aren't you with him, _and Kate wishes to God that she knew.

_#49 - Lock_

First, there is an instant of absolute silence, a premature mourning period, a compartmentalization, a lockdown of emotion, and then a deafening _blam_ and an all-encompassing whiteness, and the last thing she feels is his body across hers, shielding her from the blast, and this is ironic but she can't remember why.

_#50 - Breathe_

"I'm Kate," she tells him, as if he doesn't already know (_Jack_, he murmurs, and she waits for the flash of recognition, the moment of reckoning), and the fire burns high and bright, dappling off his skin, liquid like the blood boiling hot in her veins; her breath catches in her throat, and his eyes meet hers, and, and, _oh_--she tries to stop the crash but, damn, too late.


End file.
